The Tory Party

Showclub

Here’s the script I`m working on for my five-minute project. I haven’t posted in a while and I feel bad and silly.

All advice and guidance is welcome. Please phrase any “it sux0r” gently.

SHOWCLUB

What`s a Man Bjork?

I’ve got a coupla minutes, so let me ask y`all an incredibly important question: what’s the male equivalent of Bjork?

I ask because above the printer in the film school of the computer lab is a poster of a semi-naked Bjork. It’s tasteful and charming and good like all pictures of Bjork, but she’s holding three leaves over herself and sticking out her tongue and looks blissful and wild like a tiny toy Natassja Kinski, so it’s definitely sexay in content. It doesn’t offend my sensibilities or anything, but it seems only fair that there should be a poster next to it for those who like da fellas instead of da ladies.

But a poster of whom? If it were porny, like a Jenna Jameson, I`d put up Fabio. If it were fashion-magaziney, like a Nicole Kidman, I`d put up a George Clooney. Grace Kelly –> Cary Grant. Lindsay Lohan –> Benjamin McKenzie.

Hey. These are all white people. Boy, do I suck.

Anyway. Who has the talent, aesthetic, and effective but non-threatening sexual presence of a Bjork? Please advise. Some wall space awaits your judgment.

References I Made Today That No One Got

• The Fight Club/Calvin and Hobbes essay (inspiration for the JTSM Gin and Juice essay, which pales like a mayonnaise sandwich in comparison).
• The gom jabbar scene in Dune, as in, hey, the lye scene in Fight Club is a lot like the gom jabbar scene in Dune. Because when I make a reference in front of a class of 18-to-24-year-olds I want to make sure it misses by a geeky mile.
• The time I said I would pee on the floor if Roman Polanski won best director, since he’s a child molester. And he did, so I did. Just a little.
• There was another one but I`m sure it was equally ridiculous so I`ll let it go.

In other news, Imogen Heap also has an album coming out this winter! (Feb/March 2005). So, to recap, we’ve got a Tori Amos album, a Kate Bush album and an Imogen Heap album. And now I’ve gone and peed. I`m a peeing demon. I pee like some people shake hands.

AFRTS

Ohhh no, you can’t mail explosi-i-ives. You can’t mail explosives today (or any day!) Explosives, corrosives, poison or pornography: they cannot be ma-a-ailed.

Did that do anything for you? Would it help more if I were singing it (because I totally could)? Did you spend any time on a military base overseas, where the only English-language channel was AFRTS (Armed Forces Radio and Television Services, or, as only the most scintillating minds of the 20th century could put it, A-farts.) If the answer to either of these questions is yes, then read on boldly. If no, you should definitely skip this one. Go see the latest Strong Bad Email. Or In Passing or something. This will bore you to tears.

Due to some confusing legal thing, armed forces communications cannot carry private advertisements (although Burger King can beat out McDonald’s to be the only on-base burger purveyor, which is like a super-advertisement, and it took me years to figure out McDonald’s existed and I took a bite of one of their chopped-onion-covered ranci-burgers and thought God in heaven you have got to be kidding.) So what they play instead to make 25 minutes of M*A*S*H or The Cosby Show run in 30 minutes are public service announcements.

Not just any public service announcements.

Sometimes you would get a high-budget animated PSA like “Life: Be In It” (”Go for a shop-ping trip and leave. The car. Behind. Go throw a dart. Look at art. It’s good for the heart. You gotta find thirty, you gotta find thirty minutes a day.”) It was animated in a style sort of similar to the Red Bull ads. Research reveals this campaign originated in the 70’s, and is Australian, which means thirty years ago Australia took an interest in its citizens` staying active and fit, which might help explain why Southwest Airlines is tangling with seat-overspill problems Qantas hasn’t run into.

See? I`m not making this up.

This was way back in 1987, which begs the question: where is this effective and catchy ad campaign today when it could help get vertical some fat American asses?

Momma says I`m just big-boned.

These asses include mine at the moment, which is sitting in PJs when it should be getting dressed to run.

But most of the time you got more low-budget, military-generated fare. I wish I could see some of these now that I know something (a very small something) about filmmaking, so I could develop an appreciation for their production values, but I was a kid when I saw them so all I can do is mock.

There was the one mentioned above with a (kinda hot) tap-dancing lady mail clerk who informed a dude trying to mail an armload of poison, porn and sticks of TNT why he had a bit of a problem (and why the MPs were fixing to tackle him from stage left, I reckon). There was choreography, really catchy singing and a breakaway set, which is probably 1600 of your tax dollars at work.

There was one with a talking home electronics that swallowed this dude’s cash because he ran himself into credit debt (”Mo-o-ore money! Mo-o-ore interest!”)

There was the dude who tried to hit on a lady by lighting a cigarette (V.O.: “Be smooth, now”) until he learned she was interested in *him*, not his funky smoke breath.

There was the dude who tried to hit on a lady (I think this was a motif) at a gas station, and he filled up the tank every week, whereas she filled up every two weeks. They figured out this was because he was taking off from red lights and wasting gas. At the end of the ad, he drives off real safe and slow, and she looks after him like, ohhh, yeah, that is a smoove safe-driving hunk of man.

There are more. Oh yes. I think I may need a sequel ? maybe it can neatly segue into all the songs I remember from Okinawa Christian School (?Give me wax for my board, keep me surfing for the Lord?).

I`m noticing that ALL of these ads are useful messages. Can we pass a bill that every five ads a station plays for Check Into Cash, Cash America or Check `N` Go, that station has to play the one with the talking VCR?

Sucralose

Sucralose. I`m against it. If this makes you wonder why someone so comfortable with modern Western pressures like fluoride and silver amalgam fillings would take a stand against such a harmless yellow-packaged artificial sweetener, be aware that I collect hypocrisies like Karl Rove collects arterial plaque.

A man so wretched that his more accessible and telegenic golem is DICK CHENEY. Nice neck fat, asshole.

Sucralose, marketed under the brand name Splenda, first came to my attention when in 2002 its presence in Diet Cheerwine elicited a systematic allergic reaction from my boyfriend at the time — which is to say, a red, itching, burning rash covering his neck and torso. Some online research (always fully reliable) revealed this experience not to be an isolated one. People are always having hideous disfiguring reactions to sucralose and putting up pictures of it. I assimilated this knowledge, then continued chewing Dentyne Fire with elan.

You have to look kinda close to see whether sucralose is in something. You may get the Splenda logo on the front of the label, but if you don’t it’s a quick trip to the nutrition facts to check the ingredients (and, believe me, in something like Diet Sunkist, there are A LOT, which is probably another quick tip I should stop drinking it). I can’t tell you how many times I would offer my post-traumatic-rash boyfriend a sip of soda or piece of gum when he would ask, “Does it have sucralose in it?” And I would say, “Durr, I don’t know.” And then there would be sucralose in it. (Savvy Consumer Magazine, I am awaiting your eager call!)

Mmm. Renal failure.

They make sucralose by taking a normal, God-fearing sugar molecule, popping off three normal, God-fearing carbonyhydrohappywhatever chains, and sticking on three atoms of CHLORINE instead. Does this send up a red flag for anybody? You know, CHLORINE? I`m as laid back about drinking pool water and using bleached tampons as the next guy, but that’s got to make for a lot of chlorine in a cup of sucralose, and, yeah, if you put a little on your tongue there’s a definite high-dive-low-end-no-running-adult-swim-corn-dogs-at-the-snack-bar taste to it.

Oh, and one other thing. When you dump a cup of sucralose in with the old eggs and butter, it HISSES. That. Is not. Normal.

Of course, I still consume it periodically, because I am stupid and three years of accumulated research and anecdotal evidence is no match for a fizzy orange soda put in front of me OMG it tastes like sunshine!

But that’s me, and I live on the edge like that, alla time letting my bare feet touch the locker room floor and drying my hands on my shirttail and stuff. My kind of barely-contained chaos is not the lifestyle a little kid needs to lead.

That’s why when they came out with low-sugar Trix and Lucky Charms and crap, it freaked me the eff out. Because how is General Mills accomplishing this masterful feat? Oh, yeah — SUCRALOSE. And it’s not being marketed like “Hey, Echo Generation watching Pulp Fiction on DVD,” it’s being marketed like “Hey, Moms, here’s how to tweak your ADHD six-year-old who weighs 100 lbs!”

It’s only like 130 calories a cup. Maybe kids should eat something lower in AIR.

Dude. This is NOT a good trade off. Do NOT be feeding your kids sketchy suspicious artificial sweeteners that only passed half the number of clinical safety trials as aspartame, which in turn only passed half the number of saccharin. I mean, I love and believe in aspartame, and would campaign as long and hard and unproductively for it as I did Howard Dean, but I would not feel good about feeding it to poor unsuspecting developing bodies whose North American nutrition condition is already fighting an uphill battle.

My only hope is the people who are relying on Trix and Lucky Charms to provide their children with early morning vitamins and minerals are A) also depending on it for caloric content or B) not real jazzed by the idea of paying twenty cents more an ounce for it.

If necessity is the mother of invention, negligence and sloth must be the baby-daddy who’s paying night-to-night at the Motel 6 by selling weed.

Now go back and find my Kate Bush and a Tori Amos references like Waldo.